‘Village Rockstars’: India’s Oscars entry

Selected to be submitted to the Oscars entry from India, ‘Village Rockstars’ is a beautiful coming of age tale made by Rima Das.

This Assamese film has been made by the one-woman Army of Rima Das.

She is not only the director of the movie, but also the screenwriter, executive producer, editor, production designer and cinematographer.

The movie received a lot of praise and it was chosen for submission for Oscars by India.

Talking about the acclaim she received, Rima says that receiving recognition makes things feel possible. She says that without recognition, it becomes hard for people to try as hard.

Read on to know some interesting facts about this movie and how it was made.

‘Village Rockstars’ is about a ten-year-old girl who wants to start her own rock band. It is the second Assamese film selected as India’s Oscars submission.

It took more than three and half years of work for Rima to form the script for ‘Village Rockstars’.

The shooting of the film took more than 130 days. Rima used a handheld camera for the movie.

Coming to actors, there aren’t any big names attached to it. In fact, none of the actors were from an acting background.

Most of them were picked from the village of Kalardiya in Assam’s Chayagaon.

The movie has boldly covered many important issues in Indian villages. One of the major issues shown in the movie is how girls are forced to not go out after reaching puberty.

The main character was played a child actress Bhanita Das who received a National Award. She is Rima’s cousin as well.

When the movie was presented at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2017, it received a lot of praise from critics.

‘Village Rockstars’ is now the second Assamese feature film to win the National Award.

Image Attribution: Bhavpreet Ghai, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Image Reference: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rima_Das_Director,_Writer,_Producer.jpg